Pulling Yourself Together, the Fractured Psyche as Legacy of Monotheism

Fractured Self by JJRoberson

So much ot the language of prayer is a strange repentance for not being able to measure up to what we believe we should be. This is as true outside of conventional churches as in them. The world before monotheism saw a hosts of deities more or less in some form of unity, but also sometimes striving one against another, but the Israelite insistence on One God, not the Oneness of God, not the Eastern idea of Atman, but one personality controlling things changed the story of God and the story of the human psyche. The Sumerians could talk about deities hostile to humanity causing a flood because they were annoyed by humans, and one god, Enki, friendly to humans, saving them by instructions to build an ark. The Israelite account became one God, as crabby as the last set, but willing to save one family, and--we were told--justified in his crabbiness. And what crabbiness it was! Cities burned by falling sulfur, families swallowed into the ground, random plagues. When one God became the only god in town he had to take on all aspects of the Divine. What's more, even though he was required to do this, he was incapable of it. Yahweh could be a war god, but he was not going to be a god of sexual pleasure. In the book of Isaiah, he would brag about causing evil, but in the end this was too much, so a Devil was made. In the new view, the world was more divided than it ever would be and some things were simply no longer sacred. They were even flat out evil.

Yahweh could never really be the God of all. When that attempt was made the world was bound to be filled with devils and shadows and why in the world does that matter except that, as our minds turned from the world of pantheism to the world or monotheism the same thing happened to us. I had to stop myself and still stop myself from driving out my demons rather than soothing them. I still live, mentally, that Christian life, impatient that I cannot be as wise or courageous, or visionary as I want to be, or that while one part of me walks the path in certainty, another part is fearful in doubting. There are many parts of me. I do have a childlike spirit, but there is also an overzealous guard attending the child because he hasn't always succeeded in guarding him. And there is the Divine Spirit, God and Goddess and Lover as well. There is a sage in me as well as a lustful creature that takes pleasure whenever offered.  The fun parts of me I love. The frightened or mean ones I would drive out ruthlessly. But true integration means naming and accepting those rough fellows. In another time I would have even called those recalcitrant parts unholy or demonic. It is believed that much of what has been regarded as demon possession was the failure of a person to except certain parts of themselves until they grew into unholy and tormenting others within the psyche. But we often want, self included, is an integration that is defined by ridding ourselves of these difficult personas, and that may not be a reality.

Polytheism, the freedom to see many Gods where, for seventeen centuries there had been only one game in town, ought to be accompanied by a freedom to live with the many selves inside of us. The teaching that some gods are devils trickles down to us  believing some parts of us are devilish and not be borne as well. When Asherah is no longer divine, neither is lust and our desire is made shameful. As we step closer to embracing the gods we have forgotten or demonized, let us embrace with equal love the parts of us to which we have done the same.

Third Sunday in Extraordinary Time, Sunday of the Journey. Fool Sunday

I have been cheated before. I think I see through situations well, but this seeing came at a great cost. Aside from the many times that I gave too much of my time to the wrong people, there was a time some years ago when I trusted too much and too easily and lost a great deal of money to thieves. So, despite all the signs of doing business with a legitimate company, to this day there is part of me that is afraid it is not legitimate, is somehow a set up stealing all that I have. Against the measured common sense I use to direct myself, there is this almost constantly nervous sentinel inside of me that, having slept through its watch, is afraid of missing something again.

I want to be the holy Fool, the trusting only half human prince who steps off the edge of the world with his wallet of wealth strapped to his back, who is journeying in joy accompanied by the dog who symbolizes the soul and guardian of otherworldly things, the faithful companion. I want to be this Fool who is wholly trusting, heedless and ready to go off into whatever adventure, but overwhelmingly there is this nagging guard posted in my ear that worries and worries about the very practical until its worries are, in fact, no longer very practical at all.

I grew up in a house of worry. My mother was endlessly worried and dramatically afraid. It didn't stop her from making poor choices, and it didn't make our lives any better. There was an endless cycle of poor decision making, bad planning, and then nail biting anxiety. It reminds me of a talk a spiritual teacher gave about how difficult the spiritual life was, saying, "We don't have models. Our mothers and fathers were like this, everyone around us is like this. It is hard to get better."  And it is hard. Depending upon what path one came from and whatever angle, one might say, "I want peace. I want power. I want to experience love. I want to love God. I want forgiveness. I want holiness" but often it seems like what we want is to simply escape the madness of the world, to stop being crazy.

So it is comforting that the Buddha's last words are "Strive on" that even in the blissful joy of the Hare Krishnas' chanting, we are reminding that spiritual life is "work".  Closer to most of our homes are the constant injunctions of Jesus, such as: "We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God..." (Acts 14.22) The hard work we go through is appropriate and normal. The fact that we are not yet as loving or courageous or faithful or peaceful as we wish we were, that it is a constant work, is not only fine, but expected.

The truth is that this Fool I wish I was is not a good thing, or even a human thing. He is, after all, a little mindless. It is not that he is faithful, he is thoughtless. He is not trusting in the goodness of the universe, he is just assuming that nothing will happen. He is not waiting to be caught in his fall. He doesn't even know there will be a fall. I was thinking this morning about a time in my life I often had much resentment over and realized it was the making of me. I became sadder and more thoughtful. The person I was before had no story, no cause, no real memories or sense of self. He was happy, but thoughtless and that is the Zero Card image, the Fool. The constant worrier is also the Fool, worrying despite all evidence there is no need, clinging to a past that cannot be retrieved. The Holiness of the Fool is in integrating these silly creatures, in the transformation or alchemy that takes one from the Zero space to 1, 2, 3 and the whole road of the Tarot, and this, in the end, is a work or waiting, and a work of grace.

Reversing the Blasphemy

Saint Boniface, the "Apostle to the Germans" whether they wanted him or not, cutting down the sacred tree of Thor. It is unlikely people were standing around watching him doing it. We know that he was eventually killed by the Frisians. 

Hezekiah did what the LORD said was right, just as David his ancestor had done. Hezekiah destroyed the high places. He broke the memorial stones and cut down the Asherah poles. At that time the Israelites burned incense to the bronze snake made by Moses. This bronze snake was called “Nehushtan.” Hezekiah broke this bronze snake into pieces. Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. There was no one like Hezekiah among all the kings of Judah before him or after him. He was very faithful to the LORD and did not stop following him. He obeyed the commands that the and did not stop following him. He obeyed the commands that the LORD had given to Moses. The LORD was with Hezekiah, so he was successful in everything he did...

2 Kings 18:3-27 ERV

In the ancient world, while one might destroy the city of an enemy people, destroying their holy sites was nearly unthinkable. Even if a temple was burned, it was done after the sacred things were removed from it. In the eight century BC the people of Judah set a precedent we have never recovered from and filled examples of righteous destruction of holy places in their books. Destruction of holy places in the name of God becomes the mark of holiness in the Bible from Jacob destroying his wives' images, to Moses destroying the Golden Calf and making the Hebrews drink its dust mixed with water. Such rage comes home to roost. In reality the Babylonians burnt down the temple of Jerusalem and this destruction was repeated five hundred years later, and that temple was never allowed to rise again. 

The Ruins of the Temple of Allat, Palmyra Syria

The poison of sacred destruction, the belief that only you could be right and other ways of worship must be punished, bloomed in Christianity and Islam, the religions which succeeded Judaism and had the numbers and power to do what Jewish prophets only dreamed of. The great temples of Bel and Allat in Palmyra were destroyed by Christians when, after years of being persecuted, they became the chief and persecuting religion. The very image of Allat had her face smashed in. Allat was also worshiped in Mecca, but three hundred years later, the first Muslims would destroy her holy places there too.  While Christians were busy defacing each others churches and fighting over if images were holy or not and which Christian was right or wrong, Muslims would make it to India. Being people of the Book they could not attack churches or synagogues, but because Hindus did not belong to that pack, the Muslims felt free to loot, pillage and burn the temples of India, and they did.

This sick circle would spiral to the 1500s where Europeans would loot the world, revile the native religions of the people they found and deface their holy places all while Protestants and England burnt Catholic churches, urinated in baptismals before smashing them and destroyed holy images of saints and the Virgin Mary herself.

The madness still goes on. In the same Syria where Christians began the destruction of Allat and Bel's temples fifteen centuries ago, ISIS completed the job and then blew up several ancient Christian monasteries that were unifying places of community for Christians as well as Muslims who lived  around them. Meanwhile, a President is building a wall and putting up pipelines through land sacred to the indigenous people of the United States, and in Brazil, which could use all the prayer it can get, right wing Catholics are talking about destroying the sacred places of others. This Friday let's come together and work to begin reversing the blasphemy. Remember the holy places destroyed. Work for their revival and remember those in danger.

The Monastery of Mar Elian before its destruction in 2015. Mar Elian, a Christian saint, was revered as a sheikh by Muslims and Christian even allowed them to drape green satin, the sign of a Muslim holy man, over his tomb. This was the site of community festivals where people of all religions would gather to celebrate each other and God for centuries.

The Temple of the Sun

Magnificent ruins of the Temple of Bel in modern Syria

Midsummer is the domain both of the Golden Castle, and the Golden Temple. Today I heard of a place which I had known about a little, ravaged in time, but still true in the otherworld. The Temple of Bel dominated the city of Palmyra in Classical Syria for centuries and even the centuries of neglect and rule by Arabs and then Ottomans did not destroy it. The Temple of Bel was bombed by ISIS a few years ago, but its ruins remain impressive. It was the home of Malak-bel and he was revered at the head of the trinity of his brothers, Aglibol and Yarhibol together symbolizing the Sun, the Moon and the all encompassing Sky. This Bel is none of other than the Ba'al of the Bible, or rather, Bel means the same thing as Ba'al. Sunday school taught us that good Israelites worshiped the right God and bad Canaanites worshiped Ba'al. The Israelites destroyed Ba'al's altars and that was the end of him.

Reconstruction of the Temple of Bel 

But this neat telling was never true. Ba'al, meaning Lord was the word all Levantine people used for the high god. Later Hebrews would stop using it for God, but even now in Hebrew the word is still kept to denote a husband or any other master. The Israelites, on their way to become Jews would call their God Lord, but use another form of it, the name Adonai, another form of Damuzi, Tammuz and yes, the Greek Adonis. Adonis was, in convoluted Greek stories, the lover of the Goddess Aphrodite. In those later stories he is a silly youth who was supposed to be the lover of the Goddess of Death,  Persephone.  To those who wonder about that and say, wait, wasn't Persephone kidnapped by Hades? it should be pointed out that Hades was not the proper name of that God. Though it is almost never used in myths, the name of the Greek God of the underworld was.... yes, Aidoneus.

The Temple of Bel and its Outer Court in ancient Palmyra

So Adonai has had a strange journey from lover of the Goddess of Death to the God of the Bible, but Ba'al had a similar and profound journey we can see right here in his golden temple. Here he is, worshiped in Roman and early Christian Syria and a magnificent temple and here were learn that there were, in fact, three Ba'als. The word Ba'al would become, a little further north, Bel.   Notice that Aglibol and Yarhibol are also just: Agli Ba'al and Yarhi Ba'al, so in Palmyra they revered a trinity of Lords.  What the Hebrew Bible dreamed of doing, destroying the altars that view God in the way they hated, it took the fire power of ISIS to execute on a large scale.

The Trinity of Palmyra, Melekbel, Aglibol and Yarhibol

Melek Bel the Golden God of Palmyra, Classical Roman Bas Relief

Second Sunday in Extraordinary Time, Sunday of the Divine Beloveds

There have been several pairs of beloveds in religious history. Religious history is a term which souns more accurate than mythology, and I'm going to stick with it for now. But when I think of the divide lovers, it is Radha and Krishna, so very united that they are often called the singular entity Radhakrishna,who come to mind. Krishna is the greatest and ultimate form of Vishnu. He is Jesus in the Gospel of John declaring "The Father and I are One." But on the earth he finds his mortal lover, his other self, the one to whom he always making love, wooing with his flute, the lady who always dances with him, Radha. Often they are pictured, boating together, on swings together, in great enjoyment of each other. He is hers and she is is, choicest of the beloveds. Krishna has wives and he loves them, but Radha is his chiefest love and though she is married to another, Krishna is hers. Their love is not agape. Their love is not chaste. It is not the equal Christian love of God for all. It is a most specific love. It is a liking, a mutual attraction not often spoken of in most western traditions. In the West if Catholicism that speaks of God having specific love for some, but this love usually entails much suffering and little pleasure let alone the idea of "like". The love between Krishna and Radha is full of pleasure and passion.

What is more, when Krishna loves this mortal woman, something is revealed. Whenever Vishnu comes to earth in whatever forms, he is always joined by his other side, Lakshmi. When he is Varaha the Boar, she is Varajahi the She Boar, when he is Ram she is Sita. And we understand that Radha is the highest form of Lakshmi. Zeus loves Europa, but she is simply Europa. Aphrodite loves Adonis, but they are both gods. The love of Krishna for Radha recognizes in her his own divinity, her forgotten deepest self, her true divine self. This love is Communion and not spectator worship. Being loved by the Beloved God makes the Beloved God as well. The two are One, and so we celebrate the Divine Beloved and the hard to grasp truth that if the Beloved is not in us, he is not anywhere, and if we have not discovered in our love of God, the divinity in our own hands, we have not discovered anything worth knowing. 

The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

The 24th of June is the Nativity of Saint John. Only he and the Virgin Mary, aside from Jesus, have Solemn Nativities. This alone testifies to his important in the Churches from the very beginning. Praise to the saint who was forerunner and twin to the Lord, who brought to us the sacred rite of baptism which replaced blood and circumcision. Saint Paul later attempted to eclipse him saying that he brought baptism of the Spirit, but others said they gave the baptism of John and those who still remember John remember this is the only baptism there ever was, for John the Baptist did indeed baptize with water and the Spirit. It was under his ministrations that Jesus himself was baptized. Still words fail where poetry, the foundation of all language, does not.



on the birth of wild things

Today in the sauce thick heat you gave birth,
though
you were ancient past bearing, a
withered land
with no water, all rocks and stones
and you were cousin of the Virgin
twice virgined over, three times as old
you brought into this earth the prophet
all covered in moss
all wild eyed and full of locust
and honey
and his lungs screamed prepare the way
and his foot thumped out to herald
resurrection
and out of the protection of that
which once was
barren, all covered in vines and
tendrils he came
the Greenest of Men, who carried
his own head in his hands
and in his mouth, the sword of
his own destruction
and when you see him at the Jordan
then he is our destruction
when you see him calling you into
the water
then he is your induction to the
little death
the fire death and the water death
and the death of all that held you
and when he comes, calling,
behold the Lamb
then you know he is the Wild Thing
and you are the Wild Thing
and what he brings in his camel
hair coat
is the end of all stale safety

ii.

in the place where noes turn into yeses
i love you
in the place where they become the caresses
of miracle
i love you
in the hill country--get thee up
where he is born--with a high voice
kicking and screaming
proclaiming, dreaming
where was born that ancient thing
where from the mother whirlwind is
born the woodland King,
the desert king
the wooded king
this is the way he comes to world
after whirring away in a chariot of flame
and in the fire of this wholly joyous
desire
i declare
i love you
at the river jordan
where he pours
new saving for a newer lord
i love you wildly
i love you with his roaring voice
and his crazy fire
i adore you
i implore you
i... am in awe of you
i love you


strophe

deep inside i know you will always return to me...

in the blankets and sheets between
night and morning
where timelessness floats we stripped
and your body, with all its black hairs
was on top of me and beside me and all
over
how do you know?
and what can you say?



the sweetest release is the admission of love


iii

from the wall the mossy head of John the Baptist
half pan and three fourths devil leers down at me and
says, you ought to know by now there is no safety in love
i was born when Herod chopped off my head
that was the death of a wild thing
and with tendrils like rings and roots like
claws my body went down and down, twisting through the earth
and i picked my head up and laughed
you better laugh too
when Salome's axe comes for you
and this is the kiss of wild things
a fire on your face
and this is the love of wild things
a burning embrace
and this is the baptism of wild things
wind and fire
and this is the birth of wild things
and you are the wild thing whenever you let
my arms, like corded wood seize you
and dunk you and dunk you
until drunk with the jordan you gasp and reel
and start over again, laughing with beginning
this is repentance
this is all it ever was

First Sunday in Extraordinary Time: Sunday of the Devoted Heart

Following Sacred Heart, last Sunday and all of last week was dedicated to the mystery of the devoted heart, the heart that carries the Beloved One inside of it. Beloved one is such a special title. Sometimes God and the word God fall so short,and saying things like The Divine and the Supreme are not enough. The Beloved is met not by worshipper or child or even partner, but by Lover, and often is Lover. Beloved and Lover is the first relationship in which the devotee and the object of Devotion may exchange places, and the representation for this which seemed most appropriate to use was Sri Hanuman, bearing in his heart Rama and Sita.